A WORLD AIR FORCE?
Sit,—Your contributor on January 8th rightly says that the question of A World Air Force needs to be discussed, and he couples with it the wider conception of an International Police Force, but there is fre- quently a tendency to misunderstand the issues involved, and your correspondent Mr. Merralls seems to have done so. He sjiggests that all that is needed is for the Governments of the United Nations, each with separate forces, to combine when they feel so disposed; but this would be merely a league of victors making an arrangement with no guarantee of permanence and endeavouring to impose their will without any pretence of impartiality. How would it differ from the old balance of power politics and the Agreements and Pacts of the 1918-1939 period, which proved so ineffective? No doubt it may be granted that the United Nations would set out with an earnest desire to maintain world peace and to effect Improvements in world affairs, but fundamentally one group of nations would be dictating to another with the probability that' once again there would eventually be another world war.
A real International Force is an entirely different conception, as it is an attempt to place the force at the disposal of world government on an impartial footing, and out of the hands of individual governments who may be unstable and whose narrower national interests may be closely involved in a particular issue. I believe, therefore, that if we are to hope to avoid an endless succession of world wars discussion of an International Police Force is well worth while as a possible step towards a stable world government whose force may in time become less and less military and take on more the character of genuine police.—Yours truly,
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